


The Last Book of Magic

by Kalypso



Series: Conversations with Lady Pole [3]
Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 10:38:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16345190
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kalypso/pseuds/Kalypso
Summary: Emma Pole has joined a small colony of magicians at Starecross Hall, where they are studying the Raven King's book, written on the body of Vinculus.  But he is growing restless.  Is there any more she can learn from him before he moves on?





	The Last Book of Magic

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fengirl88](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fengirl88/gifts).



> This is the third story I have written in the world of _Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell_, and follows on from the second, [A Walk to Hanover-square](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12382101). After accepting John Childermass's proposition that she should become a magician, Emma Pole has returned from Italy with Arabella Strange and they have taken up residence at Starecross Hall, where she studies magic with Childermass, Segundus and Honeyfoot. Again, it is closer to the television dramatisation than to Susanna Clarke's novel, though some details from the book have made their way in.
> 
> The germ of the story lay in Emma's first words on screen, as she lies coughing on the sopha: "Very fond of magic, myself. There's a wonderful street magician, Vinculus. He's all lies and doom." I was interested by the thought that she already knew him before she married and began her ten years as a slave to the fairy gentleman, and also by what "lies and doom" he might have told her.

_Some of them were gentlemen magicians. But only some of them._

"Alone today, Ladyship?"

Emma Pole seated herself at a desk in what the inhabitants of Starecross Hall liked to call the Library. In truth, the hall had already possessed a library when John Segundus first arrived, but it contained no books on magic. Nor, on the face of it, did this room; most magical titles had been bought by Gilbert Norrell and vanished when Hurtfew Abbey disappeared into the Darkness. The most important book left in England was written on the skin of the man who sprawled opposite her, gnawing a leg of chicken because he had not risen in time for breakfast: Vinculus, the some time magician of Threadneedle-street. And this was the room in which the magicians of Starecross studied him, their desks covered with drawings and notes. It was Arabella Strange who had jokingly christened it the Library, but by now everyone had all but forgotten that there was another one.

"Mrs Strange has a chill," said Lady Pole. "I told her she needed another shawl when we walked on the moors yesterday, but she would not listen. I have instructed her to stay in bed, and left Mary to enforce my orders." Arabella had not taken kindly to these orders, but had felt so ill when she tried to get up that she reluctantly gave way and allowed Mary to bring her a coddled egg.

"Segundus and Honeyfoot still in York?" asked Vinculus.

"Indeed." Mr Segundus was accompanying Mr Honeyfoot on a visit to his family, where they would also buy such provisions as the village of Starecross could not furnish.

"And John Childermass?"

"He has ridden to Durham to see a book in the Bishop's library; he hopes it may cast light on scripts used in the time of the Raven King."

"Ha!" Vinculus seemed pleased.

"You think it may help?"

"I'm sure it won't!"

"It could," said Lady Pole. "In London, I once saw a carved stone in the British Museum. A French soldier had found it in Egypt, but our troops captured it and brought it home."

"Did it bear an Egyptian King's Letters?"

"Yes! But in three different forms - one was Greek, so could easily be read, but the other languages were unknown; scholars hoped that by comparing them they might eventually crack open the secrets of Egypt."

Vinculus laughed. "There's no Greek here," he said, tapping his chest with the chicken bone. "You'd have noticed it by now."

"We would." Emma frowned. "Why, then, were you pleased that Mr Childermass has gone to Durham?"

He grinned slyly. "It's time I gave him the slip."

"You want to leave? Why?"

"Childermass spent too long hoarding books for his old magician. Now he thinks he can hoard me. But I'm not sitting on a shelf while you puzzle me out. The King is back, I'm going to look for him."

"But the King gave you to us! He wrote his book on your skin - surely so that we could decipher it and understand his magic!"

"The King _lent_ you his book," said Vinculus, "and you've copied it."

Indeed, in the months since they had come to Starecross, Mrs Strange had made detailed drawings of nearly every part of his body. It was from her work that they now laboured to transcribe the unknown scripts and decode their meaning.

Mr Segundus and Mr Honeyfoot had been deeply troubled by the propriety of a lady making a close study of a man's body, and had offered to do the more delicate work themselves; but Arabella said she was a married woman, and none of them could match her skills as a draughtswoman. So they had stood close by, casting a spell of concealment over Vinculus's private parts (fortunately free of writing) while she copied the nearby areas. Afterwards, she had come to Emma's room, thrown herself down on the sopha, and laughed until she cried. "I managed to keep a straight face," she said, "but Vinculus could not - he was cackling so much that his body shook, and it was very difficult to draw it!"

"Mrs Strange told me she had not quite finished the task," Emma said. "Your left foot remains."

"You'd better get your pens out, then, Ladyship! I'm not staying till Childermass is back."

"Can't you wait until Mrs Strange is better? I promise we won't keep you more than a few days."

"I could leave _now_ ," he said. "But I'll do you a favour, seeing as you're an old friend."

Lady Pole almost laughed at his presumption. And yet it was true that she had known him longer than anyone else here. As Miss Emma Wintertowne, she had visited his yellow-curtained booth in Threadneedle-street shortly after coming to London, having heard that he stood out from the other street magicians; and he had looked up and breathed out "Ahhhh!" as if he had been waiting for her.

" _The lady will dance while bound to her chair, and a rose will stop her mouth!_ " he had declaimed. " _She will know all, and tell nothing!_ " He leaned forward, and she could smell his skin as he whispered: "We will talk again, but both of us must die first."

"Do you mean we will meet in heaven?"

"Oh, a long time before that!" he replied. Emma could not think what to say, but a fit of coughing had come to her rescue, and she bade him farewell. The encounter had haunted her, though she would never have admitted it before Mama, who thought all magicians charlatans.

And here they were, after more than ten years, in which both of them had died and been resurrected.

"Very well, then," she said. "Take off your shoe and shew me your foot."

Vinculus lay back in a chair, his foot propped on a pile of cushions, while she sat on a stool to copy some lines of text on either side of a crescent moon.

"You write the King's Letters more easily than Mrs Strange," he remarked.

"Perhaps, seeing them with an artist's eye, she draws them afresh every time. I am becoming familiar with them through study, and have begun to recognise some combinations." She pointed at a horned circle with a line through it. "This appears very often; Mr Childermass thinks it of great importance."

"You don't?"

"Yes, but not as he does. I think it may be a very common word, such as 'and' or 'the'." She smiled. "Or, going by the Raven King's previous prophecies, 'I'. The King seems to talk about himself a lot."

"That's kings for you!"

They fell silent as she worked, but he soon became restless; Arabella had rarely managed to persuade him to sit still for as much as half an hour, which was why the task had taken so long.

"One thing I've often wondered," he said. "When you spent all those years with the fairy king... did he dance the jig with you?"

"We danced interminably. I don't remember a jig."

"No... I mean - did he like to get his hornpipe out?"

"Oh." Emma flushed slightly. It was no surprise that Vinculus was curious. Ever since she had been freed from the enchantment, she had seen that curiosity in the eyes of those men who knew of it - not least her husband's. But none of them had dared ask - certainly not her husband. Only this unembarrassed street fellow with his sharp grey eyes. She did not owe him her story, but suddenly she felt it would be a relief to speak of it.

"The fairy was a very childish individual. I do not think he had any real interest in relations between men and women, unless it was to stop them." She remembered his glee in taking Arabella from Mr Strange. "I am not even sure that he possessed a... hornpipe. His pleasure appeared to lie in pulling the strings to make us all dance. He also liked to talk of killing his enemies... I think he did mean that."

"Was he a molly, d'you think?"

"A molly?"

"Did he like men?"

Emma paused. "It is true the only person for whom he shewed anything resembling real affection was Stephen..." But she had never seen any sign of that feeling taking physical form, and he appeared to detest all other Christian men.

Again, she wondered what had become of Stephen, who like Mr Strange and Mr Norrell had disappeared just after her escape. Arabella had dim memories of him shouting during her last few moments in Faerie, but all her attention had been on Jonathan. Emma could not remember Stephen raising his voice in England or Lost-Hope, so she hoped it meant he had found some way to rebel.

"The nameless slave now wears a silver crown," murmured Vinculus, as if hearing her thoughts. "I always said so."

She looked at the writing on his foot. "Do you think your new book will tell us more about him - and the rest of us? Or will it prophesy some new generation who will take over the story?"

"Haven't a clue."

On an impulse, she laid her hand on his foot, and closed her eyes. She thought she could hear a murmur of voices, but what they were murmuring was as impenetrable as the script.

"I've finished," she said.

"I'll be off then," he said, tugging his shoe on.

Emma followed him to the kitchen, watched him fill his pockets with pies, and escorted him to the hall door. She knew Childermass would be enraged to find him gone, but she was not afraid of Childermass.

Vinculus felt inside his pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper from among the pies. "Here's something to thank you for letting me loose, Ladyship." He winked, and walked away.

_A Spell for Restoring Stolen Goods to their Proper Owner_

Emma wondered for a moment if it could restore Jonathan Strange to his wife, but even before her captivity she had been an Abolitionist, and did not believe any man or woman should belong to another. In any case, it would probably be best to try it out on something smaller.

A few hours later, when she was sorting through the papers in the Library, it came to her. Childermass and the other magicians had told her how Mr Norris had made all copies of Mr Strange's book vanish, to prevent him spreading his version of English magic.

"All books on magic have disappeared from England - but the stolen books had disappeared already, perhaps into some kind of limbo," she thought. She cast the spell, then sat down to write a letter.

     John Murray Esq  
     Albermarle-street  
     London

     Dear Sir

     If Mr Strange's book on The History and Practice of English Magic  
     has returned to your shelves, I would be pleased to receive a copy.

     Yours truly

     Emma Pole

**Author's Note:**

> The Rosetta Stone was found in Egypt by Pierre-François Bouchard, a soldier serving under Napoleon, in 1799, but fell into British hands two years later, and has been on display in the British Museum since 1802. The key breakthrough in transliterating the Demotic and hieroglyphic texts was finally made by the French scholar Jean-François Champollion in the 1820s.
> 
> The Act for the Abolition of the Slave Trade was passed by Parliament in early 1807, a few months before Emma Wintertowne married Sir Walter Pole; although it was the culmination of a very long campaign, the final vote was won by 283 to 16, so I think there is a good chance that Sir Walter supported it, despite being a Tory, and that Emma, who held strong political views before her decline, was an Abolitionist (which is not to say that I am claiming her as a liberal).
> 
> Vinculus's enthusiasm for giving Childermass the slip is an element that comes from the novel; in the final chapter, after seeing the book on the revived man's body, Childermass declares "Henceforth, Vinculus, you and I shall be each other's shadow." But this resolution is clearly not mutual; Clarke says that "Vinculus's mood soured upon the instant. Gloomily he dressed himself again."


End file.
